Mad Cow Testing

byRobert Nagleon12/24/2003

I’m not the type to grow paranoid (and thought the European madcow disease to be quite overblown), but this factoid from John Stauber really hit me:

The U.S. livestock industry desperately wants us to believe that
Mad Cow disease can’t happen here, but that’s nonsense. With the disease now
in Canada, it could be in the U.S. and in Mexico too. As long as we continue
to feed cows to cows, weaning calves as we do on milk formula containing
cattle blood protein, the level of infection can spread and grow. There are
about 96 million cattle in the U.S., and last year less than 20,000 were
tested for mad cow disease. Contrast that with Britain and Europe where 10
million out of 40 million slaughtered for human consumption were tested
before eaten. The U.S. livestock industry is terrified of testing millions
of animals, because testing would likely find the disease.

According to the article, the cow was tested because it was “downed” (having walking problems)., and that is a sign of the disease. However, 200,000 of US cattle are downed. How then can the government justify such lax testing?